🤯 Culver's Root MONSTER + Monarch Diseases 😰

What's GROWING on + How to PREVENT Monarch Disease...

August 03, 2025

Happy Sunday Good GROWer,

I hope this message finds you SWELL 🤗

It’s been a busy week in the garden filled with growing plants, and an uptick in visitors.


🌿 Garden PLANT Report 🌺

So what’s growing on in the garden this week?

  • Veronicastrum virginicum ( Culver’s Root): In 2022, we brought over an unhappy, height-challenged plant looking for a change of scenery. Culver’s root is not a favored butterfly plant in our northern garden, but it is a preferred plant of bees and other smallinators with its pointy white blooms. It has flourished here over the past couple seasons. This is a SINGLE plant:

Supersize Culver’s

  • Tall phlox: this continues to flourish in 2025 without any powdery mildew issues, which is surprising because all of the rain we’ve had. In the past week I’ve seen monarchs and tiger swallowtails on it as well as our first hummingbird and white-lined sphinx moths.

For more info on WHO has been visiting the garden, scroll down to the bottom of your newsletter…

Monarch Diseases and PREVENTION 🔑 RTM 2025

Most of the time when people contact me with monarch 'health issues' it's already too late to save them.☹️ The key to growing healthy monarchs is prevention, and once you get that down, it will change your entire raising experience.

Here are 12 common issues with monarchs, with tips for how you can prevent them from ruining your (and your monarchs!) raising experience:

✅ In Stock: Floral Tubes + Racks 🌿🐛

You’ve probably noticed all of our cages and cage liners are completely sold out, and we aren’t restocking.

The three final raising products we have are floral tubes (8 pack) floral tube racks ( set of 2), and little hole floral tube lids (8 pack).

At this time, they are selling at a brisk pace on amazon, but they haven’t released inventory for the racks into our shop so I’m sharing the amazon links before the tubes/racks sell out (probably by the end of August if not before)

My suggestion is to buy 1 of each item so you can have 4 tubes for each rack + the little hole lids work well when you are using thin-stemmed cuttings:

  1. 8 Pack Floral Tubes (8 floral tubes with regular lids)

  2. Set of 2 Floral Tube RACKS (tubes are NOT included)

  3. Little Hole LIDS (OPTIONAL lids for thin-stemmed cuttings to prevent baby caterpillar drownings)

Of course, if you want to stock up for future raising, keep in mind we will not be selling these products after our shop closes this season.

🐸 Garden WILDLIFE Report 👀

It has taken a LONG time to establish trust with this little guy/gal but our resident frog is slowly warming up to us. We were weeding by the water feature yesterday and (for the first time) he just sat there in plain sight watching us while basking in the sun. ☀️

Blending in with Nature

  • Milkweed Pests/Guests addition:

A blog visitor pointed out that earwigs were mysteriously absent from my milkweed pests/guests page. For an earwig photo and more info:

  • Hummingbird Haven: This week we continue to have 3 hummingbirds zipping around the garden at a dizzying pace…exciting for us since we’ve never seen more than two at one time prior to this season.

  • Eastern Tiger Swallowtails: Yesterday, I saw two males chasing around a single female. Click here for Eastern Tiger Swallowtail Info ⬅️

I hope you’re seeing more pollinators in your garden as the season progresses? 🤞


Coming Up Next?

We’ll continue to report on plant success and failures, and expected and unexpected garden visitors…

Until next time,

Tony your Butterfly Guide